Configure an ESX server as an unmanaged node

To use an existing ESX server as an unmanaged node, an administrator needs to configure its virtual switch/network for Lab Management and provide access information to Lab Management.

As of version 2.5, Lab Management can deploy and manage guests on vSphere ESX/ESXi 4.0 and ESXi 5.0 servers. Lab Management is designed to share the ESX node with other applications which may also be using the same ESX node.

In Lab Management terms, the ESX server is called an "unmanaged node" -- which means that Lab Management does not attempt to install the operating system (in this case, ESX hyperVisor) on the physical host. Also, Lab Management will not reboot the physical host by default. (You can enable this in the Web Console if the ESX server is dedicated for Lab Management use only).

Note: The Lab Management manager uses Web Service APIs to talk to an individual ESX server directly. Currently, Lab Management does not support using a vCenter server to manage individual ESX servers.

As an administrator, create a virtual NIC and port group for Lab Management managed guests.
1. Create a virtual NIC on a Lab Management subnet on a virtual switch with access to the Lab Management subnet. Choose the "VMKernel" connection type for this NIC and give it a hostname and IP. If this ESX server is for a regular Lab Management guest, use the name cuXXX and corresponding IP. If this ESX server is to host the Lab Management domain's infrastructure nodes, use some other name and an IP which is not in Lab Management's DHCP range but still on the same subnet.
2. Create a port group. Choose the "Virtual Machine" connection type, and give it an informative name.
Have the following in place for Lab Management access:
- A valid ESX(i) license to enable read-write access to ESX configuration using Web Service APIs.
- A user with the administrator role on the ESX server. The username and password are saved in cubit-runtime.conf as "cubit_esx_user" and "cubit_esx_user_pwd" tokens. Here's the command to create a user "cubit" with password "mypassowrd" on ESX server "myserver" using Web Service API interactively:
```
                    esxcfg-user -e user -o add -l cubit -p 'mypassword' -r admin --server myserver 
```
  (You will be prompted for the username and password to connect to the ESX server.)
- The name of a resouce pool in which the Lab Management guest will be deployed. If you have not created any resource pools on the ESX server, the default pool with name "Resources" will be used.
- The name of port group in which the Lab Management guest will be deployed.
- The name and size of data store in which the Lab Management guest will be stored. The size is the amount of disk space on this datastore that is dedicated to Lab Management. It can be a fraction of the total size of this datastore. You can easily modify this value in the Web Console later.
- The ESX server must be configured to autostart all guests upon reboot.

Note: If the same ESX server is host for both Lab Management infrastructure nodes and regular guest nodes, you need to create two VMKernel type virtual NICs, one for each type of guest.